Updated January 19, 2025 at 14:25 PM ET
TEL AVIV, Israel — Three Israeli women have been set free as part of a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel after Hamas-led Palestinian militants held them hostage in Gaza for 471 days.
Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher crossed into Israel on a military transport after being driven out of Gaza City in a Red Cross vehicle on Sunday, Israel said. Hamas fighters stood on the roof of the car they were in, surrounded by crowds of Palestinians trying to get a look at the hostages, against a cityscape of war-ravaged buildings.
The Red Cross handed the women over to Israeli forces. As night fell, they were driven across the border in a military convoy to a reception center set up for the hostages to be released in the coming weeks. Israel said the women were reunited with their mothers there.
Israel said doctors and psychologists were also on hand to give the women an initial medical assessment, before being transferred to a hospital near Tel Aviv, for further treatment and to see the rest of their families.
Under the ceasefire agreed to between Israel and Hamas in Qatar last week, Hamas is set to release 33 hostages over the next six weeks, while Israel agreed to release some 1,900 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. The agreement was reached with the help of mediators from several countries and including representatives of both the incoming and outgoing U.S. administrations.
In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the government is committed to the return of all 94 remaining hostages, most of whom were captured on the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 onslaught on southern Israel, and many of whom Israel says are no longer believed to be alive.
Under the ceasefire agreement, Israel must now release 90 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Israeli authorities published a list of names of Palestinians detained after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, including Khalida Jarrar of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who has been in and out of Israeli prisons, and Abla Sa'adat, the wife of PFLP leader Ahmad Sa'adat.
In the West Bank, hundreds of people gathered in a traffic circle in a suburb of Ramallah in anticipation of their release. There was a celebratory atmosphere — families bundled up in winter coats, vendors selling sweets and coffee, light up balloons and cotton candy. Many waved Palestinians flags or donned keffiyehs, and some carried pictures of their loved ones being freed, holding them high in the air. Traffic backed up down the street, with drivers honking their horns or cheering from their windows.
In Charleston, S.C., President Biden spoke on Sunday about the many rounds of often tense negotiations that produced the ceasefire deal.
"The deal that I first put forward last May for the Middle East has finally come to fruition," he said, adding that hundreds of trucks are entering the Gaza Strip "as I speak," carrying assistance to people there. "Today the guns in Gaza have gone silent," he said.
He said the negotiations over the deal took a long time, and "this is one of the toughest negotiations I've been part of."
Biden also defended broader U.S. support for Israel under his administration, saying the U.S. led a "principled and effective policy" that led to the ceasefire deal and helped to weaken Hamas' allies in the region, including Hezbollah and Iran.
The ceasefire faced an initial delay of a few hours
The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect at 11:15 a.m. local time (4:15 a.m. ET) — around three hours after the originally scheduled time for hostilities to cease. It was supposed to have gone into effect at 8:30 a.m., but the Israeli prime minister insisted that Israel did not consider the terms of the agreement valid and enforceable until Hamas had handed over a list of the names of hostages to be released on Sunday.
Under the agreement, Hamas was supposed to hand them over on Saturday. The group did eventually, and the ceasefire appeared to be holding throughout the day.
Gonen, 24, was kidnapped at the Nova music festival as part of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7; Damari, 28, a British-Israeli citizen, was abducted the same day by militants attacking Kfar Aza, a small Israeli community — known as a kibbutz — close to Gaza; and Steinbrecher, 31, was also taken from Kfar Aza.
According to a statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Gonen "loves dancing, traveling, and enjoying life. Friends and family describe her as energetic, funny, family-oriented, and full of life."
Friends of Damari describe her as "well-loved and popular, a friend to everyone. Emily enjoys barbecuing, karaoke nights, and loves hats," according to the same statement. She was abducted along with her friends Gali and Ziv Berman, who remain in captivity.
Steinbrecher is a veterinary nurse, according to the group's statement, and "has cared for animals since childhood, when she helped at the school's petting zoo. She loves sports, especially running, and goes for early morning runs around the kibbutz every Saturday." The group said her family considered her a devoted aunt to her nephews.
Throughout the morning, surveillance drones flew over Gaza and the Israeli military reported strikes in the territory. NPR confirmed that a jeep belonging to the Al Qassem Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, was struck.
The spokesman for Gaza's Hamas-controlled civil defense, Mahmoud Basal, said Israeli attacks killed 19 people across various parts of the Gaza Strip on Sunday morning.
Gazan health authorities said a total of 46,913 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and close-quarter fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants in this war. The Israeli military says 405 soldiers have been killed in the war, in addition to around 1,200 people in Israel killed on Oct. 7, 2023.
On Sunday, the Israeli military also said it carried out a special operation alongside the country's domestic intelligence service that helped recover the body of infantry soldier Oron Shaul. He had been killed during clashes with Hamas in 2014.
Hamas militants are still holding 94 hostages inside Gaza. Most of those were seized on Oct. 7, 2023, but others were taken hostage in the preceding decade, and a substantial number are no longer alive.
In Jerusalem, the far-right Otzma Yehudit party released a statement saying its leader, former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, was making good on his threat to leave Netanyahu's governing coalition, and he would take his party's ministers with him. The statement called the ceasefire deal a "victory for terrorism."
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